College football spring transfer portal opens today: What you need to know

College football's spring transfer portal window opens today. Here's what you need to know about what happens next.

Scenes from a college football game. / © Joshua L. Jones via Imagn Content Services, LLC

The 2024 college football transfer portal opens up again today as the spring transfer window unleashes the floodgates once again for one final time before the season finally kicks off. After watching their teams in practice, coaches have one more opportunity to patch up areas of concern on their rosters and make final decisions ahead of this fall.

Here's what you need to know as college football's transfer portal window opens again.

Transfer portal dates

The transfer portal opens on Tues., April 16 and will remain open for the next two weeks, through Tues., April 30. Originally, the NCAA planned to open the spring window on May 1 but changed course to make it earlier on the calendar.

Teams are allowed to host recruits on visits throughout the spring window as a contact period.

Where we left off: College football transfer portal team rankings

How the college football transfer portal works

The NCAA Transfer Portal is a private database that includes the names of student-athletes in every sport at the Division I, II, and III levels. The full list of names is not available to the public.

A player can enter their name into the transfer portal through their school's compliance office.

Once a player gives written notification of their intent to transfer, the office puts the player's name into the database, and they officially become a transfer.

The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player's request and NCAA rules forbid anyone from refusing that request.

The database includes the player's name, contact information, info on whether the player was on scholarship, and if he is a graduate student.

Once a player's name appears in the transfer portal database, other schools are free to contact the player, who can change his mind at any point in the process and withdraw from the transfer portal.

Notably, once a player enters the portal, his school no longer has to honor the athletic scholarship it gave him.

And if that player decides to leave the portal and return to his original school, the school doesn't have to give him another scholarship.

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